‘Andrew Tate’ is a name that has been spreading throughout the world of social media this past summer. Tate made a name for himself in 2016, being a contestant on Big Brother UK. However, he was kicked out of the Big Brother House due to a leaked video of Tate hitting a woman as well as posting offensive tweets. He allegedly fled to Romania for a multitude of reasons, one of which being to evade rape charges since police in Romania are less likely to investigate sexual assault cases. It wasn’t until recently that his name and controversial takes on society and women became a mainstream topic of interest within Gen-Z circles.
If you haven't already come across podcast interviews or rants with Andrew Tate on TikTok, here’s the rundown of his controversial takes.
Tate makes claims that “depression isn’t real,” which of course completely dumps on the mental health community. He also–as a single, unmarried man–states that fathers don’t need to be around their children and that it is the mother's job to raise them. He elaborates by saying that he only saw his father once a month. He goes on to explain that women like mystery and that if he as a father were present, the mother may lose some interest in him. Essentially, he’s placing female attraction over the raising of a child. Considering the views Tate holds and some of the trouble he’s gotten into, it seems he would have benefitted from a present and involved father figure. He also mentioned in a deleted YouTube video that it's easier to get off on rape charges in Romania, stating that it was 40% of the reason he moved there. He states that society and the legal system favor women when we know that historically that isn’t the case. He also relates women to property and has stated that women should bear some of the blame for their rapes. Additionally, he talks about imprinting on teens because they’ve had fewer sexual partners than women in their mid-twenties. The most offensive thing I heard Andrew Tate say in a podcast interview is this: “A man can only cheat if he loves someone else. If I have a woman I truly love and I go out and [expletive] and I come back and I don’t care about her and I love my girl, that's not cheating, that's exercise. If she even talks to a dude, that's cheating.” Andrew Tate was banned from Twitter in 2017 and was recently banned from all social media platforms.
Andrew Tate poses a threat and his rhetoric is dangerous. Now more than ever, the definition of who men (and women) are is constantly updating and changing. For this reason, Gen-Z is having a mass identity crisis, searching high and low for how to find themselves, define themselves, and feel secure in an increasingly unstable world. Andrew Tate uses this crucial time to his advantage by telling young men with impressionable minds how to “be a man” and how to make money. He has a ‘Hustlers University’ training program which accumulated approximately 110,000 students this year alone, the majority of whom are males. Furthermore, he promotes arrogance and a self-centered view of life, and this unempathetic and uncompassionate mindset will cause many relational issues in the future. Tate tells these young impressionable minds who they are, who they can be, and how to achieve it. Tate’s views, as previously mentioned, cater to innate human desires and temptations of wealth, power, sex, and control. Rather than learning how to keep these drives in check and within respectable contexts, he emboldens and empowers young people to delve into their fantasies, which is exactly what people want to hear.
This affects us as college students, too. We have various anonymous confession pages, as was discussed thoroughly in an article by former Andews student Abi Lee. At times, hateful or inappropriate content was being housed on those pages. For example, an intimate photo of someone was posted without regard for that person as a human being who deserves privacy and respect. It wasn’t taken into consideration how people consuming that content would be negatively affected by it either. Various interviewees in Abi Lee’s article stated their frustrations and dismay with what they had been subjected to as a result of these posts. I bring this up because it's influences like Andrew Tate who amass young individuals like those at university and spread their hateful rhetoric to our campuses, resulting in the harm of students.
I see Andrew Tate as a symbol of toxic masculinity and a big part of what is wrong with today's society. Consequently, I believe that a rebuttal of Andrew Tate and what he stands for falls under what it means to value people and have good ethics. I believe that people should be self-sufficient and care about themselves, but I don’t think that focusing solely on oneself at the expense of others and one's community is right. I think we are better off being empathetic and compassionate creatures, and this would improve society as a whole. Being a good person is about doing what is best for you and for others, not looking to exploit and use others’ weaknesses against them. If Andrew Tate had received genuine and unconditional love growing up, he may have turned out differently. Deep down, I think there is a lonely individual who turns to material success and lust. for meaning rather than creating genuine connections with people. The only way to combat such hateful ideologies is to simply be the opposite of who he is–instead, we can spread love and respect. In doing so, we are able to uplift one another.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.